Stressed Amoeba Sprouts Arms, Eats Your Brain

More from the science category on Reddit:

It spends its days as an amoeba, lazily meandering around and eating bacteria. But when it’s stressed out, it grows two long, whip-like appendages called flagella. … “Naegleria’s pretty amazing because it can make one of these structures entirely from scratch. And it does it really fast,” Fritz-Laylin says. “It can do it in an hour to an hour and a half.” [This] itty-bitty creature has 16,000 to 17,000 genes. Humans edge them out in gene count, but only by a few thousand. Naegleria gruberi has a malicious cousin, named fowleri, that causes a rare human disease. “[If] you happen to get some water up your nose…  they basically go into your nose, into your brain and eat your brain.”

via Oddball Amoebas Sprout Arms When Stressed : NPR.


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